


The Evolution of the Egg Baby Assignment

by minusoneday



Series: Let's Fic Kid!Fic(lets) [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Fake Baby, Fluff, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minusoneday/pseuds/minusoneday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of the period, Mr. Wilson hands out the babies and lets the students get into their pairs to discuss their caretaking plans.</p><p>“Okay,” Stiles says, once he settles into the desk beside Lydia. “So, I was thinking - ”</p><p>“I’m going to stop you right there,” Lydia says. “Children are not in my ten-year-plan. Children are not in my <i>twenty</i>-year-plan. Therefore, we’re going to structure this assignment as if I’m the successful math genius I fully intend to be, which means I’ll be out of the country at a math conference for the duration of this baby thing. Have fun raising our child.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Evolution of the Egg Baby Assignment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhoNatural](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoNatural/gifts).



> Wordswrittenovercoffee wanted some fluffy fic and prompted me with: 
> 
>  
> 
> _Stiles gets saddled with one of those realistic dolls for Health class, and is abysmal at taking care of it (mostly he just props it up in his bed and plays video games in between googling how to fake the results) and Derek shows up needing him to research something ASAP, and finds the doll and makes all these judgemental corrections about how he should be taking care of it. So Stiles is like “You do it then, weirdo,” and Derek does, and gets strangely attached to the ‘baby’ and names it and gets all protective and Stiles ends up getting an A._
> 
>  
> 
> I had grand plans of making his cracky and hilarious, and instead, I wrote 3,000 words of... well. Fluff. That is kind of quiet and sweet. (I THINK. I have lost all ability to gauge fluff, as all I do lately is ponder new and improved angst-filled fic ideas.) Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Stiles’ heart can’t help but give a little bit of a leap when Mr. Wilson reads off Lydia Martin’s name, immediately followed by his own. It’s a holdover from his pining days, when he’d been forever hoping to be paired up with her for an assignment. He’s past that now; she’s his friend, not his crush, but he doesn’t think he’ll ever get rid of that thrill over the potential of working together.

“Everyone have a partner?” Mr. Wilson asks, and Stiles gives Lydia a grin, a stupid sort of beam that just makes her roll her eyes. “Excellent. Now, I know you’ve all got graduation on the brain, but we’ve got one final project before the semester’s out. Thus, I present to you...”

He reaches underneath his desk and pulls out... a baby.

Stiles stares, certain it’s a doll, but nonetheless marveling at how _real_ it looks.

“...the evolution of the egg baby assignment,” Mr. Wilson finishes, then goes on to explain, in detail, how each pair of students will be responsible for an Infant Simulator 3000.

Long story short, they’re being given a fake baby that’s going to spend the next three days crying and demanding food, blankets, and diaper changes, and Stiles always thought this assignment was a thing of the past. How is it that it’s 2015 and teachers are still putting high school seniors through this crap?

At the end of the period, Mr. Wilson hands out the babies and lets the students get into their pairs to discuss their caretaking plans.

“Okay,” Stiles says, once he settles into the desk beside Lydia. “So, I was thinking - ”

“I’m going to stop you right there,” Lydia says. “Children are not in my ten-year-plan. Children are not in my _twenty_ -year-plan. Therefore, we’re going to structure this assignment as if I’m the successful math genius I fully intend to be, which means I’ll be out of the country at a math conference for the duration of this baby thing. Have fun raising our child.”

“No way,” Stiles says. “Lydia - ”

“You still owe me for that Latin translation,” Lydia says sweetly.

Which is, unfortunately, a fair point. Stiles deflates.

“Have a good time at your conference, sweetheart,” he grumbles, and Lydia just winks at him, reaches out to ruffle his hair.

*

The baby won’t stop crying. It’s been two straight hours now, and no matter what Stiles does, it _won’t stop_. 

“Please,” Stiles pleads, resisting the urge to shake it. He’s pretty sure the Infant Simulator 3000 has ways of knowing if you’re mishandling it, and Lydia will actually kill him if he ruins her perfect 4.3 via a failing Health grade. “Please, please stop. Please shut up, I can’t handle you crying anymore, okay? Nothing can _possibly_ be wrong with you, so quit being _dramatic_.”

The baby’s only response is to cry louder.

“That’s it,” Stiles says. “I’m changing your name from Susie to Desdemona. You hear me? You are now Desdemona. Which means ‘of the _devil_.’”

The crying changes to outright wailing.

*

Three hours of crying turns out to be Stiles’ limit, and he ends up shoving Desdemona underneath a pile of pillows on his bed, which sort of mutes the crying. Once he cranks up the volume on Skyrim, he can barely hear it.

Of course, he can’t really hear anything else, either, which is why he doesn’t realize Derek’s in his room until he’s right in front of him.

“Gah!” Stiles exclaims, jerking hard enough that he nearly falls out of his chair. “ _Shit_ , dude, I thought we agreed you weren’t allowed to sneak up on me anymore!”

Derek frowns, although he looks more sleepy and rumpled than threatening. His hair is sticking up in all directions, and he’s dressed in a soft, gray henley. He looks grumpy, which Stiles is pretty sure is Derek’s natural state, but without his leather jacket, he looks downright cuddly.

It’s a thought that’s been occurring to Stiles more and more recently, one that he quickly banishes from his mind each and every time.

“What’s that noise?” Derek demands, looking suspiciously around the room.

“What?” Stiles asks, realizes he’s nearly shouting, then tugs his earbuds out of his ears and gives his head a shake. “What?”

“That _noise_ ,” Derek says, and he crosses over to Stiles’ bed, shoves the pillows off and unearths Desdemona.

“Oh,” Stiles says. “ _That_. That’s Desdemona. She’s my project for the weekend.”

“Are you supposed to be letting her scream like that?” Derek asks, eyebrows ticking up at Stiles in a thoroughly judgmental way, which, unfair, okay, _Derek_ didn’t have to sit through three hours of unrelenting crying.

“She’s defective,” Stiles says darkly, vaguely mutinous. “She hasn’t stopped crying since I brought her home.”

Derek rolls his eyes - scarily reminiscent of Lydia, actually - and picks Desdemona up, settling her in the crook of his elbow and starting to gently sway her back and forth, like it’s second nature to him.

Desdemona’s cries abruptly break off; Stiles’ ears ring in the silence.

“...What?” he asks, dumbfounded. “What? How did you do that?”

“It’s not rocket science, Stiles,” Derek says, his tone filled to the brim with yet more judging. “Listen, did you find anything out about those fairy rings?”

“Yes,” Stiles says, still gaping at Desdemona, who’s now laying docile as you please in Derek’s arms. Derek clears his throat after a moment, his eyebrows jerking up even higher, an unspoken ‘Well?’ implied in the movement. Stiles sighs, closing out of Skyrim and bringing up his most recent google doc. 

“Here,” he says, gesturing toward the bullet points he’s compiled. “This is what I’ve found so far.”

*

To Stiles’ surprise, Derek sticks around once they’re finished covering the less-than-impressive amount of information Stiles has dug up. It might have something to do with the fact that as soon as Derek stands up, Desdemona starts crying again.

“Oh my God,” Stiles moans, burying his face in his hands. “How am I supposed to _sleep_ tonight?”

“She’s probably just cold,” Derek says. “I left the window open when I came in - there’s a draft.” He crosses over to the window to close it, then grabs one of Stiles’ hoodies, wrapping Desdemona up in a gesture that Stiles would be hard-pressed to call anything but _tender_.

It takes all of five seconds for Desdemona’s crying to stop.

“You’re a baby whisperer,” Stiles says in an awe-filled voice. “How are you so good at this?”

Derek goes stiff for just a split-second, enough time for Stiles to immediately regret the question, worry flooding him that the answer might be because Derek once had little cousins, or maybe even younger brothers or sisters, Hales who didn’t make it out of the fire.

He and Scott are on infinitely better terms with Derek than they used to be, but there are still some topics that are off-limits.

After a moment though, Derek’s shoulders relax. “Laura babysat, for awhile,” he says, voice gruff. “While we were in New York - it was a good way to make money. I used to help.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, unsure what to follow it up with. “Well, that’s - you’re really great at it. I mean, I know that’s a fake baby, but she cried for literally three hours straight when it was just me, and I tried _everything_.”

“Did you try holding her?” Derek asks, arching a single, thick eyebrow and turning his Judgy McJudgerson gaze on Stiles.

“It’s a _fake baby_ ,” Stiles says.

Derek huffs a sigh and shifts to cradle Desdemona against his chest; she looks so incredibly tiny against Derek’s ridiculous pecs and broad shoulders.

“She’s programmed pretty realistically,” Derek says. “And sometimes babies aren’t actually crying for a particular reason - they just want to be held.”

He moves closer, as if he’s going to hand the baby back over to Stiles, which is not something Stiles is on board with in the slightest.

“No,” he says, throwing up his hands to halt Derek’s forward progress. “Nope. You keep holding her, she likes you.”

“I have things to do, Stiles,” Derek says, but Stiles doesn’t miss the way he adjusts his hold on Desdemona, holding her even closer.

“Nothing more important than taking care of my baby,” Stiles says cheerfully, then flushes once his ears catch up with his words.

Derek either doesn’t notice or chooses to ignore him; regardless, he doesn’t try to pass Desdemona off to Stiles. Instead, he settles himself down on top of Stiles’ bed, which, it turns out, doesn’t do much to help combat Stiles’ blush. Mostly because Stiles has spent more than one early morning jerk-off session imagining Derek sprawled out exactly the way he is.

Minus the fake baby, of course.

“Uh, you wanna watch a movie?” Stiles says quickly, switching over to Netflix on his laptop. “They’ve - ooh, they finally put up Avengers 2.”

“Fine, whatever,” Derek says, and Stiles queues up the movie, hesitating for only a minute before he turns off the lights and scrambles onto his bed beside Derek, the laptop situated on the trunk he has at the foot of his mattress. It’s a little bit of a tight squeeze, but it isn’t uncomfortable.

“There a reason you felt the need to douse the room in darkness?” Derek asks, voice very flat.

Stiles scowls at him. “Makes it easier to see the movie,” he says. “Now be quiet, it’s starting.”

*

It will forever be a mystery to Stiles, but he somehow manages to doze off sometime between the final battle of the movie and the credits.

At some point, a low, miserable wail works its way into his subconscious, and he claws his way out of a sleepy haze, face screwed up in a frown as he tries to figure out what that vaguely familiar sound is.

It’s not until he muzzily blinks his eyes open that he spots Derek pacing over by the window, the sharp angles and hollows of his face thrown into sharp contrast in the moonlight. There’s a bundle all wrapped up in his arms, and that, Stiles realizes, is the source of the noise.

“Shhhh,” he hears Derek whisper, rocking Desdemona gently back and forth. “C’mon, we got you all fed and took off the blanket that was too hot, now it’s time to go back to sleep, shhh, s’okay, you’re okay.”

He keeps up a soft, steady murmur, a calming litany of soothing words, and eventually Desdemona’s cries taper off, leaving the room once more dark and silent.

Derek looks up then, and he catches Stiles watching him. He tenses - Stiles can see the shift of his muscles, even in the room’s dim light - like he’s embarrassed to be caught in this.

“Hey,” Stiles says very quietly, voice rough with sleep. He still feels only half-awake, if that. He’s covered up, he realizes, his sheets pulled up to his chest, which he certainly doesn’t remember doing. He’s still in his t-shirt and gym shorts, but that’s pretty typical sleepwear for him, so it’s not like he’s overheated or anything. “Thanks, Derek. I didn’t - guess I didn’t hear her when she started.”

“It’s fine,” Derek says. “She’s probably good for a few hours now, so I should get home. It’s late.”

“Nah,” Stiles say carelessly, because here, in the dark, it feels like this should be the simplest thing in the world. “You should stay. Come back to bed.”

Derek hesitates for long, stretched-out moments, but when he finally moves, it’s toward Stiles. He sets Desdemona gently down on the mattress, then turns away from Stiles and starts to strip out of his clothes - first the henley, then the undershirt, and finally his belt and jeans.

Stiles watches unabashedly, mouth getting drier by the second.

When Derek turns, darkness clings to the dips and valleys of his body, while the moonlight highlights his sculpted curves - the muscles that leave him looking like a Greek statue, an Adonis come to life.

He crawls under the covers next to Stiles, easing down beside him. It’s a twin bed, so poor Desdemona runs the risk of being crushed, except that Derek carefully scoops her up at the last second, settles her on his chest instead of at his side.

Stiles doesn’t think too much about it before he turns into Derek, presses his forehead to the solid bulk of Derek’s shoulder, allows himself the liberty of tucking his hand into the crook of his elbow.

It’s one of those times he wishes he had a werewolf’s enhanced hearing, just so he could determine whether or not Derek’s heart had picked up its pace.

“Night,” Stiles whispers, close enough to sleep to not worry about second guessing the potential consequences of his actions.

Derek doesn’t say anything, but he turns his head, his bearded chin passing gently along Stiles’ temple. It’s surprisingly soft, nothing like the prickly bristle Stiles had always imagined it would be.

He falls asleep to the sound of Derek’s breathing, the steady rise and fall of his chest.

*

In the morning, Stiles wakes up approximately fifteen seconds before his dad opens the door, just long enough to register that Derek’s still in his bed, although they’re tangled and twisted far more closely than they were when Stiles had gone to sleep.

Desdemona, however, is still tucked carefully into the crook of Derek’s arm, safe and snug as a bug in a rug.

There’s a knock, and before either of them can move, the door opens. “Stiles,” his dad says, and then he trails off as he takes in the scene.

“Stiles,” he repeats, his voice a little bit of a warning this time around.

“My school-wife abandoned me for a math conference,” Stiles croaks, squinting at his dad with one eye open, the other eye shut. “Derek’s helping me raise our fake baby.”

His dad doesn’t say anything, just _looks_ at them long and hard, the kind of expression that Stiles is sure he uses on particularly stubborn persons of interest, the ones that won’t tell him what he wants to know.

In the end though, he just sighs and shakes his head. “Breakfast in ten,” he says and heads downstairs, although he pretty pointedly leaves the door open.

Stiles turns toward Derek and props himself up on his elbow. Derek looks vaguely panicked, but Stiles leans in and gives him an affectionate sort of headbutt. 

“S’fine,” he murmurs. “He’s good. It’s Saturday, means he’s making omelettes. It’s tough to break him out of his good mood on omelette day. And I’ll even let him have some bacon, he’ll be fine.”

“I can go,” Derek offers quickly, but Stiles gives him a dark look, reaches out to curl his fingers around Derek’s arm.

“I need you here,” he says firmly. “To help me with Desdemona.”

“We’re not calling her Desdemona,” Derek says promptly, sounding as grumpy and offended as Stiles has ever heard him, which only makes Stiles dissolve into a round of giggles. If pressed, he’ll point to a lack of caffeine as a cause.

The noise, quiet as it is, must trigger something in Desdemona, who immediately begins her familiar wail. Derek swears softly under his breath and pushes himself out of bed, one arm curled protectively around Stiles’ fake baby, the other reaching for the caretaking packet Stiles had been handed at school.

Stiles slides out of bed, but before he can circle around to Derek’s side, the crying’s stopped.

“Seriously,” Stiles says, “professional baby whisperer. Desdemona has no idea how good she has it.”

“Luna,” Derek mutters, giving Stiles a look like he’s daring him to disagree. The name makes Stiles throw his head back, honest, delighted laughter taking him over.

“Subtle,” he says, and when Derek looks scandalized, he shakes his head, lets his grin spread wide over his face. “No, I like it, Luna it is. Come on, let’s go get some breakfast. You deserve so much coffee.”

Derek opens his mouth, like he’s about to argue, then shuts it again, like he hasn’t actually found anything to argue against.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Stiles says. “Put on some pants, I’ve got sweats in the bottom drawer, okay?”

“...Okay,” Derek agrees, and Stiles doesn’t quite succeed in politely turning away as Derek somehow manages to juggle both holding the baby and tugging on a pair of sweats.

Somehow, the entire scene causes Stiles’ stomach to do a backflip, flooded with warm feeling.

“A baby looks good on you,” he says thoughtlessly, and then, before his brain can do the sensible thing and intervene, he adds, “and so do my sweatpants. They look good on you, too.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Stiles can feel his own cheeks heating up - a mirrored reflection of the pink that’s slowly creeping into Derek’s.

“Breakfast,” Stiles says quickly, before any further awkwardness can invade the moment. “I’m starving, all of this baby watching is hard work.”

Derek snorts, but he sounds amused, not pissed off, and when Stiles heads downstairs, Derek follows, close enough that Stiles can feel the heat radiating off him.

“You wanna take her to the park later?” Stiles murmurs, just before they reach the bottom of the stairs. “I have to write this whole paper - figure I might as well do it right, give myself something to write about.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Derek says, and his arm brushes against Stiles as they enter the kitchen, a small, simple touch that nonetheless sends a zing of anticipation all through Stiles.

They can start with breakfast though, no real need to rush. Stiles, after all, wants to do this right.

**Author's Note:**

> Haha, also, I don't think Desdemona means PRECISELY "of the devil." Google seems to be telling me that "ill-fated" is more correct. Desdemona, however, was in the first hit I came across when I googled "evil baby names," which seems like something Stiles would have done, and that website gave the meaning as "of the devil," so I'm sticking to it.
> 
> As ever, you can find me on tumblr at [sidekickinit](http://sidekickinit.tumblr.com).


End file.
